DUBLIN: Veteran journalist, author, and commentator Robert Fisk has died of a suspected stroke in the Irish capital, Dublin at the age of 74.

Fisk was unwell on Friday and was admitted to St Vincent’s hospital where he died a short time later, The Irish Times reported.

Highly praised but controversial, the British foreign correspondent was known for covering the Lebanese civil war, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, and the ongoing Syrian war.

He went on to become one of the most highly regarded and controversial British foreign correspondents, reporting on the first Gulf War, and was one of the only western journalists to interview Osama Bin Laden.

“The world of journalism and informed commentary on the Middle East has lost one of its finest commentators,” Ireland’s President Michael D Higgins said.

“I have had the privilege of knowing Robert Fisk since the 1990s, and of meeting him in some of the countries of which he wrote with such great understanding. I met him in Iraq, and last year I had my last meeting with him in Beirut, during my Official Visit to Lebanon.

“Generations, not only of Irish people but all over the world, relied on him for a critical and informed view of what was taking place in the conflict zones of the world and, even more important, the influences that were perhaps the source of the conflict,” he said.

“He was fearless and independent in his reporting, with a deeply researched understanding of the complexities of Middle Eastern history and politics,” Micheal Martin, the Irish taoiseach, he added.

(with inputs from Agencies)